Takarazuka Revue Company performs musical revues and
Western-style musicals with all-female casts for predominately
female audiences. With five different companies, ten shows a week
at a permanent house outside of Osaka that seats over 2,000, a
second theatre in Tokyo, tours throughout the country, and
occasional international performances, the group is a commercial
and cultural phenomenon: performing to over 2.5 million people a
year, it has also inspired a video game, several anime series, and
a number of YouTube clips. In a country where the mass culture of
digital entertainment and manga (comic books)
dominates the youth scene and traditional culture is revered but
rarely attended, Takarazuka has a unique niche, appealing primarily
to young women through fairly conventional live theatre
productions. Unlike the all-male kabuki and noh theatres,
Takarazuka has little recognition outside of Japan. The companies
perform various styles, from Broadway shows like West Side
Story to a musical adaptation of War and Peace,
to Las Vegas–style dance revues, to all-women kabuki/noh
pastiches.

Elisabeth, a German musical with music by Sylvester
Levay and book and lyrics by Michael Kunze, is a plot-driven show
with little character development mostly in the English-language
style of sung-through mega-musicals, with many reprises of catchy
songs. Elisabeth has been in Takarazuka's repertoire,
with only minor costume changes, for over a decade. It amalgamates
numerous theatrical and popular traditions and demonstrates a
somewhat unusual approach to cross-dressing that focuses on women's
strength while eschewing sexualized objectification. The production
additionally evokes many elements of youth culture, including rock
concerts, manga, and anime. Unselfconsciously theatrical and almost
completely earnest, it employs myriad commercial techniques
(manipulating the amplification levels; large-scale, repeated use
of stage fog; hydraulic lifts toward heaven; and obviously
mechanical manipulation of scenery) with only a single hint of the
irony or pastiche that seems so common in many Western musicals
today.

An epic tale based on the life of Elisabeth of Bavaria, the show
begins as her murderer—an anarchist—is undergoing a trial in
purgatory. Claiming that Elisabeth (Yuri Shirahane) and Death
(Natsuki Mizu) always loved each other, the anarchist stages
Elisabeth's life as his defense. Throughout her life, Elisabeth and
Death continually flirt with mutual love. Toward the end of her
life that attraction becomes overwhelming; at one point, Elisabeth
finally asks Death to take her, but Death refuses, wanting not just
her life but an affirmation of her love. This only happens after
the murder, as the couple transcends toward heaven, dressed all in
white on a hydraulic platform evoking, Cats-like, a
tire with the requisite fog and lights.

While originally written for both male and female performers,
the Takarazuka production of Elisabeth subverts
Western expectations about the sexualized nature of cross-dressing.
While men wrote the original show and adapted and directed it for
the Takarazuka Revue Company, Elisabeth employs
crossgender casting without the familiar objectification of women
for a presumably male viewer: the company portrayed male roles in a
passionate, dramatically committed, and esthetically minimal style
by altos in tailored but not tight clothes (the performers of male
roles are known as otokoyaku), while sopranos in
skirts portrayed women (musumeyaku). The musumeyaku
dancers freely wore skimpy outfits; there was no need to hide any
voyeuristic elements under the guise of cross-dressing. The makeup
and wigs emphasized European facial characteristics, but all the
women had a strong "feminine" style. No stubble, facial hair (with
the exception of one mustache), or lines tried to trick the eye;
close-up photos demonstrate that the male characters clearly are
played by conventionally "attractive" women, although a willing
suspension of disbelief worked to make the male characters
believable. The representation of Death seemed inspired by manga
and anime: black leather, high boots, long blond hair turning green
at the edges, green lips, and intricate embellishments along one
hand. Death generally read as an effeminate male character, but
sometimes a strong feminine side appeared as the gender
representation continually disrupted expectations.

Much of the staging seemed formulaic, but a few moments
demonstrated surprising sophistication regarding gender and
cultural issues. Toward the end, Elisabeth's son rebuffed...

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